The boy was delivered by caesarean section at Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey and weighed 6 pounds 2 ounces, the statement said. Prince Edward was with his wife -- the Countess of Wessex -- at the birth, it added.

The baby boy, who has not yet been named, will be the Queen's eighth grandchild and is eighth in line to the throne.

Edward, 43, and his wife Sophie, 42, already have a daughter, three-year-old Lady Louise Windsor, who was born four weeks premature in 2003.

Sophie had suffered a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy in 2001 before becoming pregnant with Lady Louise.

The couple married in June 1999 after they met at a tennis event six years earlier.E-mail to a friend